Category: Islam

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The Christian Response to Persecution of Archbishop Bashar Warda

In the aftermath of the defeat of ISIS in Iraq, what is the future of the Christian church there? Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the population of Christians in Iraq has plummeted from 1.6 million to just under 400,000 in 2016 (estimates vary). Will they continue to exit? Return? Rebuild as a smaller church?

One of the leaders in answering these questions and shepherding the church in Iraq is Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Church, based in Irbil, Iraq. Warda has been an international voice for the church, has provided pastoral care and facilitated relief services for 20,000 people, supported refugees, promoted inter-religious dialogue, and inaugurated a Catholic university in 2015.

Earlier this semester, the Under Caesar’s Sword project here at Notre Dame hosted Archbishop Warda with the support and sponsorship of the Center for Ethics and Culture. Warda spoke in several venues in the United States, including Georgetown University, where he was hosted by the Religious Freedom Research Project, partner in Under Caesar’s Sword. Warda exemplifies what Under Caesar’s Sword is all about: the response of Christians to persecution. He exemplifies one of the most salient findings of the project, namely that Christians respond to persecution even under the most difficult of circumstances through constructive efforts to build ties with other communities and contribute to the common good, thereby strengthening their freedom and position in society. Outsiders who understand this response can better assist Christians living under persecution.

Warda’s talk at Notre Dame was well attended and well received. Several students afterwards asked how they could be involved in helping persecuted Christians. One student, Zach Pearson, wrote up the talk in Notre Dame’s renowned student publication, The Irish Rover. As Pearson describes, Warda’s first point was a challenge to Muslims:

He stated that “if there is to be any future for Christians and other religious minorities … in the Middle East, there must be a change and correction within Islam.”

He was predominantly concerned with the ideology of political Islam, including the enshrining of sharia as state law, which causes non-Muslims to effectively become second class citizens.  He called it a “ruling system that preaches inequality and justified persecution,” which therefore needs to be stopped in order for Christians to survive.  This realization has been made by leading Muslim minds in Asia, but has not yet found its way to the Middle East, the archbishop noted.

In reference to ISIS, the archbishop said that “while the fighting force of Daesh [ISIS] may have been defeated … the idea of the reestablishment of the caliphate has been firmly implanted in many minds throughout the Muslim world.”  He made the point that it is a change in ideology along with a prevention of violence that is key to saving the Christian presence in the Middle East.

His second point was about how the West could help Christians survive in Iraq:

He highlighted a few main points:  the importance of prayer; efforts from Western leaders to support equality for minorities in countries where persecution is taking place; and material and intellectual support focused on helping create sustainable Christian communities, specifically in the realms of education and healthcare. Additionally, the archbishop cited the importance of not allowing a sense of “historical relativism” to cloud the reality of persecution.

When asked what college students can do to actively contribute to helping persecuted Christians, he said that “praying for us is important.”  He spoke to the importance of social media to raise awareness for persecuted Christians, who, he reminded the audience, are “the most persecuted religion today.”  He referred to students who have come to help teach in schools and volunteer in these communities for anywhere from a one month to a whole year.  Finally, he called students to speak out publicly on campus, asking rhetorically, “when the next wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your campus here hold demonstrations and carry signs that [say] ‘We are all Christians’?”

To me, one of the most remarkable of Warda’s points was a response to persecution that he recounted Christians in Iraq exercising: forgiveness. Christians have forgiven and continue to forgive their persecutors. This does not preclude at all their efforts to secure help, bolster their position, or defeat ISIS decisively. It is one response of Christians, though, that amounts to a distinctly Christian response.

 

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Religious Freedom: The Muslim Question

Today the Religious Freedom Institute launches its Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team in Washington, D.C. As a Senior Associate Scholar at RFI, I’ve seen first hand the Institute’s unfolding of a vision since its founding in 2016, one of the most impressive dimensions of which is the establishment of action teams of activists and scholars to promote religious freedom in various spheres – a South and South Asia team, and ones for the Middle East, the United States, International Religious Freedom Policy . . . and now Islam. Heading up the Islam team is Jennifer Bryson, an ArcU contributor, no less.

Here at Arc of the Universe, much attention is given to the persecution of Christians around the world. It is critical to stress that religious freedom is a human right for all human beings and to shine the spotlight as well on other religions, regions, and contexts in which widespread and egregious violations of religious freedom take place. One is Islam. Muslims number 1.8 billion adherents and are 24% of the population (that’s from the Pew Research Center in 2015), form a majority of the population in 47 countries (give or take a few depending on how you count) and have large populations elsewhere (consider India, where Muslims are 14% of the population and number 172 million – nearly 10% of the world’s population of Muslims!).

Most importantly, religious freedom issues are rife among Muslim populations. A piece in The Spectator dated this past Saturday, March 31, expresses valence of these issues in its title, “When Will the West Take A Stand on the Persecution of Muslims?” Critics in the West routinely tar Muslims as violators of religious freedom, overlooking that they are, in large numbers, among the violated.

The piece opens:

Anti-Christian persecution, for so long a great untold story, has started to gain the world’s attention. But the suffering of Christian communities, from Syria to Nigeria to China, is part of an even broader phenomenon. Religious conflict is on the rise across the globe, with ancient tensions being raised by new political methods. And in many countries — Sri Lanka, India, the Central African Republic and elsewhere — it’s Muslims who have the most reason to fear violence. In Burma, they may even have been victims of genocide.

That, at any rate, is what UN officials are trying to investigate after a wave of brutality which has forced 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the coastal region of Rakhine State since last August. Burmese soldiers, police and armed civilians carried out a campaign of diabolical violence, in which hundreds of villages were burned to the ground and helpless civilians were machine-gunned and dumped in mass graves.

There were warning signs — in 2012, 200 Rohingyas were killed and more than 100,000 displaced — but Western observers missed them. Sanctions were lifted, foreign investment surged, Aung San Suu Kyi was hailed as her country’s saviour. As the human rights campaigner Benedict Rogers observes, the international community was ‘too quick to embrace positive signs. It was almost inconvenient to be confronted with what was happening to the Rohingyas and others’.

The scene in India is eye-opening, too:

In India, too, ancient tensions have been emphasised by new movements, in this case Hindu ones. The RSS, a volunteer network of millions, sees India as a ‘Hindu nation’ and runs programmes to convert Christians and Muslims. This tradition has its extremists — some of whom are close to power.

Officials from the ruling BJP party, an offshoot of the RSS, have rewritten school textbooks to bring them closer to the nationalist story. (For example, the fact that Gandhi’s killer was a Hindu fanatic goes unmentioned in some classrooms.) One of the party’s star campaigners is the firebrand Hindu priest Yogi Adityanath, who once told an audience: ‘If they kill one Hindu man, then we will kill 100 Muslim men.’

Every few months someone is killed by a lynch mob on suspicion of possessing beef. Hindi has recently gained a new word, gautankwad, which literally translates as ‘cow terrorism’. A spokesman for Minority Rights Group International tells me that there are ‘degrees of state complicity’ in these incidents. And when the authorities tighten legislation against cow slaughter and on ‘forced conversions’, it can ‘provide a cloak of legitimacy to anti-minority violence and discrimination’. Yet, the plight of India’s Muslims — four million of them in the province of Kashmir, where the Indian army stands accused of countless human rights abuses — goes un-remarked by western leaders uncomfortably aware of India’s economic clout.

Of course, “the Muslim Question” also must be asked of Muslim countries, factions, and schools of thought that are unfriendly to religious freedom. Mustafa Akyol, who writes regularly for The New York Times, is a pioneer for religious freedom in Islam, and is a dissident who has suffered for his stands, including being detained in Malaysia last year, penned a piece in the Times a week ago Sunday arguing that religious repression causes Muslims to leave the faith — and, conversely, that a regime and atmosphere of freedom promotes a vital faith:

As a Muslim who is not happy to see my coreligionists leave the faith, I have a great idea to share with the Iranian authorities:

If they want to avert more apostasy from Islam, they should consider oppressing their people less, rather than more, for their very oppression is itself the source of the escape from Islam.

That truth is clear in stories told by former Muslims, some of which I have heard personally over the years. Of course, as in every human affair, motivations for losing faith in Islam are complex and vary from individual to individual. But suffering from the oppression or violence perpetrated in the name of religion is cited very often.

A final plug: My interest in the Muslim Question is strong, having just completed a book manuscript on the issue that Oxford University Press will be publishing, tentatively titled, Religious Freedom in Islam? Intervening in a Public Controversy. I wrote the book under the auspices of what has now become the Religious Freedom Institute. More to come on this.

Today, my congratulations and best wishes go to Jennifer Bryson and the new Islam & Religious Freedom Action Team at RFI.

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Religious Freedom Is For Muslims

This blog has given much attention to the religious freedom of Christians.  A human right, religious freedom is for everyone.  Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty — whose 50th anniversary was celebrated in December in Rome at the conference of Under Caesar’s Sword — teaches that religious freedom arises from human dignity.

Today, the religious freedom of Muslims merits attention.  U.S. politicians direct angry rhetoric against Muslims for political gain.  Donald Trump has called for an end to Muslim immigration into the United States.  He extolled an early twentieth century incident where an American general summarily executed Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with bullets “dipped in pigs’ blood.”  31 governors have refused to allow Syrian refugees into their state, often appealing to anti-Muslim sentiment.  In 2009, Tennessee residents sought to block the building of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on the grounds that Islam is a violent philosophy, not a religion (while others supported the Mosque).  The list goes on.

Two recent pieces are worth reading on this issue.  One is by Chad Bauman, professor of religion at Butler University in Indianapolis, one of our Under Caesar’s Sword scholars, and an expert on the religious liberty of Christians in India.  Writing for Religion Dispatches, he recounts an incident at a backpacker’s hostel where a Hindu proprietor, seeking to elicit solidarity, said to him and his friends, “Americans hate Muslims, too.”

Bauman explains:

Still today, when I travel in India, Hindus presupposing my agreement frequently make off-handed and derogatory comments about their Muslim neighbors. For those concerned about the effectiveness of the United States’ advocacy for religious freedom around the world, the perception that “Americans hate Muslims, too” should be a matter of great concern.

As I have written elsewhere, India’s Christians suffer from various forms of social and legal discrimination, and are vandalized, kidnapped, or attacked (occasionally even fatally) about 250-350 times a year. This is a serious problem, and one deserving international approbation. However, the repression and persecution of India’s Christians pales in comparison to that of its Muslim minority.

The perception that “Americans hate Muslims, too” helps to feed the view that American advocacy of religious freedom is little more than Christian advocacy:

In fact, Indians are also widely aware of the problem of hate crimes committed against Muslims in America, where, according to FBI statistics, and proportional to the respective national populations, they are roughly as common as attacks on Christians in India. (One of the reasons that this problem is of particular interest in India, of course, is that those intending to attack Muslims in America often mistakenly attack Indian American Sikhs or Hindus, as reported in this Times of India story.)

All of this, of course, simply serves to confirm the impression of many Indians that “Americans hate Muslims, too,” and that our advocacy for religious freedom is really just Christian advocacy. Overcoming this impression, so that the United States might become a more effective, credible advocate for religious freedom in India will require consistent, intentional work.

In my view, it is worth stressing that U.S. religious freedom policy is not just for Christians. By law and in practice, the U.S. government offices that promote religious freedom cover all religions, everywhere, and do a remarkably thorough job of it.  The annual reports of the U.S. State Department Office of International Religious Freedom and of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom are the best reports of international religious persecution and discrimination that one will find anywhere.  Bauman’s point is well taken.  For the U.S. to merit an international reputation that matches the balance of policy, it must publicly denounce the curtailment of the religious freedom of Muslims — and of everyone — with focused effort.

The other piece, by Laurie Goodstein in yesterday’s New York Times, details the efforts of imams in the West to teach a theology that counters that of ISIS.  At a time when so much attention is focused on ISIS and when such attention reinforces a view held by many that Islam is hard-wired for violence and intolerance, the piece documents intensive and courageous efforts by imams to offer a different voice.  The imams have suffered death threats from ISIS:

It is a religious rumble that barely makes headlines in the secular West since it is carried out at mosques and Islamic conferences and over social media.The

Islamic State, however, has taken notice.

The group recently threatened the lives of 11 Muslim imams and scholars in the West, calling them “apostates” who should be killed. The recent issue of the Islamic State’s online propaganda magazine, Dabiq, called them “obligatory targets,” and it said that supporters should use any weapons on hand to “make an example of them.”

The danger is real enough that the F.B.I. has contacted some of those named in the Islamic State’s magazine “to assist them in taking proper steps to ensure their safety,” said Andrew Ames, a spokesman for the F.B.I.’s field office in Washington.

It is critical that we hear all Muslim voices and encourage those who take risks for peace.  To do so will not hurt, but rather will give credibility to, the cause of persecuted Christians.  And, on account of human dignity, it is just the right thing to do.

 

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Forgiving ISIS

In all of the back-and-forth since the recent beheadings of Coptic Christians by ISIS, one reaction is startling  — that of Coptic Bishop Angaelos, who extended forgiveness.  See here.  Forgiveness is hardly an obvious or natural response and is certainly not an easy one.  It is not something to which anyone has a right and it does not preclude condemning or fighting ISIS.  Why did Bishop Angaelos forgive?  He explains:

It may seem unbelievable to some of your readers, but as a Christian and a Christian minister I have a responsibility to myself and to others to guide them down this path of forgiveness. We don’t forgive the act because the act is heinous. But we do forgive the killers from the depths of our hearts. Otherwise, we would become consumed by anger and hatred. It becomes a spiral of violence that has no place in this world.

Bishop Angaelos was able to see a purpose in these horrific deaths:

I learned a long time ago that when one prays, one prays for the best outcome, not knowing what that outcome would be. Of course, I prayed that they would be safe. But I also prayed that, when the moment came, they would have the peace and strength to be able to get through it. It doesn’t change my view of God that these 21 men died in this way. They were sacrificed, but so much has come out of it. They brought the imminent dangers to marginalized peoples, not just Christians, but Yazidis and others in the Middle East, to the attention of the whole world.

He calls for united efforts on behalf of persecuted Christians — and all those who are denied their religious freedom.

I would like to see us all start to work towards human rights generally, because when we’re divided into different departments or organizations any change will be fragmented. If you look at the rights of every individual, God-given rights, we can all start to work together and safeguard any people who are persecuted anywhere. Of course, the vast majority of persecution falls squarely right now on Christians in the Middle East and that needs to be addressed. But, as a Christian, I will never be comfortable just safeguarding the rights of Christians. We need to help everyone.

His and other reactions to persecution on the part of Christians, ranging from non-violent protest to behind-the-scenes diplomacy to taking up arms, will be the subject of a major conference that the Center for Civil and Human Rights is holding in Rome on December 10-12, 2015.  Entitled “Under Caesar’s Sword: An International Conference on Christian Response to Persecution,” the conference commemorates the 50th anniversary of Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty.

All are invited!

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Voltaire is Not the Answer for France

The New York Times has published at least three pieces in the past three weeks documenting France’s reassertion of its historic secularism — known as laïcité – in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo killings and the accompanying attack on a Jewish supermarket in early January.  See here, here, and here.

A policy of state-promoted secularism, laïcité was advanced in the French Revolution and saw its triumph during the Third Republic, culminating in the landmark 1905 law that separated church and state in a way that gave the state great control over the Catholic Church.

Now, France is doubling down on laïcité, making December 9th a new Day of Laïcité; requiring prospective teachers to demonstrate their grasp of laïcité; and forcing students and parents to sign a charter pledging respect for the principle. Such a draconian reassertion appears motivated by shock and fear, not only towards the attacks themselves but also in reaction to the large number of Muslims students who refused to observe a moment of silence for the victims.

While the students’ refusal is troubling, and while sympathy for the attacks, and ever more so the attacks themselves, are reprehensible, I wish to argue, as I did in an earlier post, that more laïcité is not the answer.

Towards Muslims, laïcité has meant a ban on headscarves and veils worn by girls in schools; the heavy restriction of minarets on mosques; the state’s failure to build enough mosques to accommodate Muslims; and attempts to pass laws banning Islamic sermons not in French, halal meat, and slaughterhouses that observe Islamic law.

By contrast, the state allows Catholic schools (which it also heavily governs) to hold mass every day; sanctions public holidays on Catholic holy days; and allows schools to serve fish on Fridays and to observe the liturgical calendar.

Add to this combination of restrictions and allowances the state’s permission of magazines to publish pictures that render in obscene fashion both the Prophet Mohammed and the members of the Trinity, and it is not hard to see why French Muslims fail to feel respected as equal citizens.

It is time for France to reconsider its history of the state managing religion and imposing secularism on the nation and rather adopt the principle of religious freedom, which allows religious people to manifest their faith freely and to govern their own communities — as long as, crucially, religious people are willing to respect the full human rights, including the religious freedom, of others.  In this sense, Muslims will have to do their part.  But will they not be more willing to do it if they are respected as equals?

One of the Times pieces quotes political scientist Dominique Moïsi as calling for moving on beyond laïcité, which “has become the first religion of the Republic, and it requires obedience and belief.”  He continues, “[t]o play Voltaire in the 21st century is irresponsible.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Pakistan By the Numbers

One of the world’s great voices for religious freedom today is Knox Thames, a researcher for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  See Knox’s piece for the Foreign Policy blog on Pakistan’s religious freedom travesty.  It’s a colorful and succinct presentation of an acutely bleak picture.  May it motivate action on behalf of Pakistan’s minorities.

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Soft Power Needed, Too

Not just the hard power of military force but also the soft power of building coalitions with moderate Muslims is needed to defeat Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq, Christian leaders argued at the In Defense of Christians summit that concluded today in Washington, D.C., according to Mark Stricherz over at Aleteia.

The summit was an effort to advocate for and show solidarity with Christian communities in the Middle East who have suffered dramatically in recent decades and are now remnants of what they once were.  Hosted by a group whose name is also In Defense of Christians, the summit assembled a remarkable cast of Christian leaders from across the region.

Hard power-ites might be skeptical — not of the summit or its cause but of the claim that anything but bombs will drive out the Islamic State.  It was no less a realist than General David Petraeus, though, who understood the importance of reconciliation with moderate Muslims in his leadership of the successful “surge” of 2007-2008 that allowed the U.S. to exit from Iraq without ignominy in 2011.  I’ve been reading about it in Surge, written by Peter Mansoor, Petraeus’ right-hand man during the operation.  Through the U.S. army’s reconciliation with Sunnis and through its encouraging the new national government to include Sunnis and Kurds in important positions, Sunnis were peeled away from their alliance with Al Qaeda, leaving Al Qaeda isolated and vulnerable.  None of this is to deny the thorough and brave counterterrorist operations that hunted down and rooted out Al Qaeda, but these alone could not have done the job, Mansoor argues.

Since the U.S. departure, it has been a lack of reconciliation among Iraqis that has allowed the Islamic State to rise as far as it has.  Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s failure to include Sunnis and Kurds in important parts of the national government allowed the Islamic State, despite its horrific tactics, to ally with Sunnis against the government – and has left the U.S. in the position of now having to send its (air) forces back in.

As I argued in an earlier post, reconciliation must go deeper than even Petraeus’ alliance-building.  In coming posts, I will offer concrete ideas of what this could involve.  One dimension, though, is alliances among religious leaders, whose spiritual and moral authority is a critical asset for building ties across factions.  We can be grateful for In Defense of Christians for bringing this to our attention.

 

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David Brooks Resounds John Owen

David Brooks’s column in the New York Times this past Thursday resounds John Owen’s post of August 30th arguing that ISIS cannot be understood apart from its religious ideas.  Brooks’ conclusion:

 

If ISIS is to be stopped, there will probably have to be some sort of political and military coalition. But, ultimately, the Islamists are a spiritual movement that will have to be surmounted by a superior version of Islam.

The truest version of each Abrahamic faith revels in the genuine goodness of creation. These are faiths that love the material world, especially the body. They’re faiths that understand that the high and the low yearn for each other, and that every human body has some piece of the eternal, even if you’re fighting against him.